Lakitu's Japanese name, 'Jugemu' (ジュゲム); or 'Jugem' as it was romanized in later games of the series, comes from a rakugo folk tale. In the tale, a couple could not think of a suitable name for their newborn baby boy and so the father went to a temple and asked the chief priest to think of a name. The priest suggested several names, but they coulnd't decide on one, so they decided to mix all of those names into one, the final result being:

During the development of Street Fighter II, an early design for Dhalsim bore a striking resemblance to Ganesha, a Hindu god with four arms and the head of an elephant. His name around that time was Naradatta’, which may refer to a character in Osamu Tezuka’s manga Buddha.

The cycloid were created with the intention to give a "strange vibe" to the players. Cycloid – β, in particular, was designed in order to see if the development team could introduce elements such as mirror surface processing, refraction of light through transparent objects, and representation of flames, all of which were very popular elements in programming around the time of the game's release.

The game was originally based on the unfinished Akira Kurosawa film, Oni. Though the idea was dropped in favor of an original story, the artistic elements and battle movements were inspired by other Kurosawa films such as Yojimbo and Seven Samurai.

The main framework of the game is themed around "uneasy children without parents" represented as "machine life-forms that have lost their creator" and "androids that have lost the humankind they were supposed to protect."

The game was written by Yoko, Haha Kikuchi and Yoshiho Akabane. The team defined the game's central theme as "agaku", a Japanese word meaning to struggle out of a bad situation. Another theme for the game was "love", which was unusual given that all the central cast were robots, which were not normally associated with emotions.

According to Yoko, while the scenario of Nier was "wet" in its emotional content, for Nier: Automata he aimed for a "dry" narrative concerning the world's inherent unfairness and the prejudices the characters are forced to confront.

The 3DS is the reason why almost every girl in the Senran Kagura series has large breasts. When series producer Kenichiro Takagi started to think of what people wanted to see in 3D the most, he thought of breasts in 30 seconds.

Soldier: 76 was originally created in the 1990's for a comic by Blizzard employee Chris Metzen. When the development team behind Overwatch sought to include a "fallen leader" character, Metzen gave the team full permission to use Soldier: 76 to fill in the role.

According to Don Bluth, Princess Daphne's design was heavily inspired by Gary Goldman's Playboy magazine collection. Don used the magazines for reference, as well as partial inspiration from Marilyn Monroe.

"I, who had never looked at a Playboy magazine before, was introduced to one by Gary Goldman who pointed out there were several provocative pictures within, and that they may inspire us.

There was a lot of the Marilyn Monroe image that came across with Daphne. She was a cliche of the dumb blonde. She may not work today, because you know the women have to be able to wield the sword too."

While designing the game's RPG elements, the staff at Platinum Games were at least partially inspired by The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt in the design of their sidequests, which they felt they would never be able to match. Game designer, Takahisa Taura, said:

"When we were making the game, The Witcher 3 came out. The sub-quest elements were so great, it was kind of demoralizing, so we just stopped playing the game..."